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THE ENTIRE WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

By Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

CONTENTS:

The Autocrat of the Breakfast table
The Professor at the Breakfast table
The Poet at the Breakfast Table
Over the Teacups
Elsie Venner
The Guardian Angel
A Mortal Antipathy
Pages from an Old Volume of Life
Bread and the Newspaper
My Hunt after "The Captain"
The Inevitable Trial
Cinders from Ashes
The Pulpit and the Pew
Medical Essays
Homeopathy and its Kindred Delusions
The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever
Currents and Counter currents in Medical Science
Border Lines of Knowledge in Some Provinces of Medical Science
Scholastic and Bedside Teaching
The Medical Profession in Massachusetts
The Young Practitioner
Medical Libraries
Some of My Early Teachers
A Memoir of John Lothrop Motley
A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our Hundred Days in Europe

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE

THE AUTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The interruption referred to in the first sentence of the first of
these papers was just a quarter of a century in duration.

Two articles entitled "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" will be
found in the "New England Magazine," formerly published in Boston
by J. T. and E. Buckingham. The date of the first of these
articles is November 1831, and that of the second February 1832.
When "The Atlantic Monthly" was begun, twenty five years
afterwards, and the author was asked to write for it, the
recollection of these crude products of his uncombed literary
boyhood suggested the thought that it would be a curious experiment
to shake the same bough again, and see if the ripe fruit were
better or worse than the early windfalls.

So began this series of papers, which naturally brings those
earlier attempts to my own notice and that of some few friends who
were idle enough to read them at the time of their publication.
The man is father to the boy that was, and I am my own son, as it
seems to me, in those papers of the New England Magazine. If I
find it hard to pardon the boy's faults, others would find it
harder. They will not, therefore, be reprinted here, nor as I
hope, anywhere.

But a sentence or two from them will perhaps bear reproducing, and
with these I trust the gentle reader, if that kind being still
breathes, will be contented.

"It is a capital plan to carry a tablet with you, and, when you
find yourself felicitous, take notes of your own conversation."

"When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my Dictionary.
The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences.
The author may arrange the gems effectively, but their fhape and
luftre have been given by the attrition of ages. Bring me the
fineft fimile from the whole range of imaginative writing, and I
will fhow you a fingle word which conveys a more profound, a more
accurate, and a more eloquent analogy."

"Once on a time, a notion was ftarted, that if all the people in
the world would fhout at once, it might be heard in the moon. So
the projectors agreed it fhould be done in juft ten years. Some
thousand fhip loads of chronometers were diftributed to the
selectmen and other great folks of all the different nations. For
a year beforehand, nothing else was talked about but the awful
noise that was to be made on the great occafion. When the time
came, everybody had their ears so wide open, to hear the universal
ejaculation of BOO, the word agreed upon, that nobody spoke
except a deaf man in one of the Fejee Islands, and a woman in
Pekin, so that the world was never so ftill fince the creation."

There was nothing better than these things and there was not a
little that was much worse. A young fellow of two or three and
twenty has as good a right to spoil a magazine full of essays in
learning how to write, as an oculist like Wenzel had to spoil his
hat full of eyes in learning how to operate for cataract, or an
ELEGANT like Brummel to point to an armful of failures in the
attempt to achieve a perfect tie... Continue reading book >>